"Antenna House Formatter V6.2 now supports page layouts specified using either CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects) for formatting documents for PDF and print. Antenna House Formatter V6.2 offers all the features (GUI, support for over 50 languages, PDF generation), W3C compliance, extensions, the significantly enhanced performance, unlimited document size and SVG support, vector support for EMF and WMF, new output capabilities through the new Barcode Generator Option, MIF Creator Option, INX Creator Option and CGM Option, MathML native drawing,support for SVG output by SVG Output Option, PANTONE® color support by PANTONE® Option and Web Interface for Formatter to support the use of AH Formatter via the Internet, the two-pass formatting that makes it possible to format huge documents, high quality EPS embedding in PDF, the enhanced PDF features, AcroForms, PDF/A, PDF1.7, PostScript output, and numerous other enhancements by AXF extension. New to AH Formatter is the XPS Output Option that enables the outout of XPS (XML Paper SpecificationI) files."

"Apache Ant is a Java library and command-line tool whose mission is to drive processes described in build files as targets and extension points dependent upon each other. The main known usage of Ant is the build of Java applications. Ant supplies a number of built-in tasks allowing to compile, assemble, test and run Java applications. Ant can also be used effectively to build non Java applications, for instance C or C++ applications. More generally, Ant can be used to pilot any type of process which can be described in terms of targets and tasks."

"DITA Compare frees editors to work on documents without having to track where they are making changes. Use DITA Compare to automatically add revision flags or status attributes showing changes between any two versions of your document, enabling reviewers and customers to see exactly where changes have been made. These attributes can be processed in your publishing pipeline to add styling and/or change bars to your published documents."

"DeltaXML DITA Merge takes two or more DITA files and merges changes that have been made, relative to their common ancestor, into a single DITA file. You can see all the changes and review comments in one place, review edits, resolve conflicts and create a new DITA revision that can be processed using your editing tools or inserted back into content management."

"An industry-strength DITA publishing platform for HTML5-based content delivery: The DITA Accelerator is a high-performing, reliable platform that publishes DITA XML content into a wide variety of formats. Large and small enterprises rely on the DITA Accelerator for content delivery on a daily basis."

"Provides general-purpose DITA map, topic, and domain specializations for the Publishing industry, as well as supporting processors (e.g., DITA Open Toolkit plugins) including EPUB and MOBI generation, HTML5 generation, and others."

"DITA InPrint solves a key challenge for organizations considering migrating their technical and business documentation to DITA: publishing documents that conform to corporate standards. DITA InPrint makes it easy for non-technical users to design publishing templates that conform to corporate standards. And it enables users to easily publish DITA XML content with those templates to fully styled Microsoft Word and PDF documents."

"The DITA Open Toolkit, or DITA-OT for short, is a set of Java-based, open source tools that provide processing for DITA maps and topic content. You can download the OT and install it for free on your computer to get started with topic-based writing and publishing."

"This utility packages all files referenced in a ditamap (including all conrefs in any file) and packages them into a zip file." Note: separate versions available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

"The objective of this project is to develop an ontology to describe DITA XML objects and to publish tools to generate RDF triples based on that ontology. In the end, it enables the publication of the metadata of a DITA documentation set to the Semantic Web and consequently its linking with other data types (product, people, sales, non-DITA document metadata, etc.)"

"You and your customers are embracing the powerful Jive social collaboration platform. Make sure that your documentation, the official voice of the company, is part of the conversation with your partners and customers. The DITA to Jive plug-in allows you to benefit from two worlds: structured content and community collaboration. Your documentation can now increase the value of your social platform for your customers while keeping customers and employees informed of important corporate content."

"This plugin is a DITA to WordPress importer. Specifically it is a WordPress import module which will take the two-pane Web Help output from the DITA Open Toolkit and import the hierarchy of XHTML pages into WordPress. It will import images too, though not as WordPress attachments."

"Your intelligent content, delivered smarter: Its not hard to get DITA content onto the web these days, but it often ends up feeling like a printed user manual. DITAweb takes your content the extra mile for a truly personalized, seamless customer experience that leverages your DITA content to the maximum."

"The Dynamic Information Model project provides a way to single source a style guide and business rules in your DITA source. We provide a library of generic rules and a user-friendly user interface to instantiate actual rules based on the generic ones and a script to obtain the Schematron schema to be used to enforce those rules."

"This project defines a walk-up-and-use, wiki-like experience designed to encourage the widest possible deployment of basic DITA writing capability across new communities of users, whose requirements can help drive additional DITA tools and services."

Not published. See form at the bottom of this page for more information.

"Fluid Topics is a full-web solution for publishing online documentation produced with structured content authoring tools. Fluid Topics analyzes modular content in its native format (XML, DITA, SGML) as created by your structured authoring solution and leverages the coherence and semantic richness of their structure. Users are not lost in countless PDF documents, but instead they access content topics directly."

"Heartsome TMX Editor 8.0 is a powerful TM maintenance tool for all CAT software. It provides many useful and practical functions besides common editing features, allowing you to perform TM maintenance tasks easily, simply and all with one tool. Designed to handle big TMX files, allowing you to easily edit the contents and various TU attributes of an entire TMX or TM. Convenient filters that help you isolate segments with inconsistent translations, invalid characters or untranslated segments, to name a few. Create your own customized filters so you can filter out segments with any default or customized attributes. Then you can modify, correct, delete or export these filtered segments as needed."

"Heartsome Translation Studio 8.0 is the latest version of Heartsome's CAT software series. This version features many revolutionary improvements compared to previous versions, especially with regard to ease of use and file format support. Heartsome Translation Studio 8.0 has incorporated feedback based on practical experience from project managers, translators and proofreaders in the localization industry, which has resulted in a wealth of improvements and innovations. Heartsome Translation Studio 8.0 supports both Google Translate API v2 and Bing Translator, and is pioneering machine translation storage as a TM in the Heartsome XLIFF file. This makes machine translation instantly available to you without waiting, or paying superfluous fees for reaccessing these machine translation APIs."

"IdXML is a DITAOT plugin that enables DITA content to be mapped to any arbitrary XML structure. Designers typically do not want to import complex DITA content into their templates, but prefer a simplified XML that can be mapped to their specific, and often changing, design elements. This provides a flexible approach allowing content to be mapped to a single "story" that can flow through an entire document. However, it is often the case that content needs to be mapped to different areas in a template. Our plugin can do this too."

"Migrate is a cloud service that enables subject matter experts to automate the conversion of their content to DITA and Custom XML. It provides greater control over conversion quality, immediate turnaround times and operates on a low-cost, pay-as-you-use basis. We have helped our customers convert more than 500,000 pages of legacy content to DITA XML. Migrate can be used to convert a single document, with Stilo operating the service, or by global documentation teams that need to convert tens of thousands of pages of legacy content, on-demand, according to their own project deadlines."

"proLibro is a next-generation, secure, professional-grade digital delivery platform that adapts to provide advanced layout and researching capabilities. And it’s designed specifically for knowledge workers who need constant access to reference content – customers working within the legal, financial, medical, education, or science and technology sectors."

"PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine is a server-based system that manages content flow and delivers high-quality, consistent product and service information throughout the product lifecycle. It can intelligently aggregate, profile and assemble content automatically to provide accurate, relevant product and service information. Users can publish to one or multiple medium(s), such as Web, interactive and page-based formats. The software produces on-demand, updated publications across all target media, including HTML for Web, EPUB or Help delivery and page-based formats such as PDF and PostScript, as well as Microsoft Word."

"PTC Arbortext Styler enables stylesheet developers to create and maintain XML-based stylesheets for automated publishing without the need for specialized programming skills. Users can create a single source of style that supports multiple output types. The stylesheets are used by PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine to publish XML content to HTML and Web pages, print or PDF, EPUB, HTML Help and Microsoft Word."

"This DITA Open Toolkit plugin identifies errors in DITA tagging, element nesting, language standards, and common syntax errors, many of which are based on the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. A quality assurance report is created as a single HTML file containing links to each project topic file and a stylized DITA Open Toolkit build log."

"At the heart of each RenderX publishing solution is RenderX XEP Engine. XEP is built around the mature, high-quality formatting kernel developed by RenderX and which has passed many years of deployment in a wide range of environments. XEP is continually improved in the quality of formatting, standards' conformance, support for advanced features and in compliance to strict requirements to the formatted output of print-ready materials."

"This project is aimed at improving collaboration and production processes for DITA-based web documents, by providing high-end CMS features using inexpensive open-source tools. Ruby-based "Fluent XML" Module: A module that lets you use nested function calls to output HTML, without worrying about closing tags, and without having to output a collection of strings. Ruby-based XML Styles and Transforms (RXSLT): A Ruby-based XML transformation engine that lets you write transforms in a Ruby-ized version of XSLT, but which puts the power of Ruby at your disposal to do conditional processing, use subroutines, store values for later use, and do anything else that Ruby lets you do (a lot!). DITA Publishing using DreamWeaver Templates: A set of tools that uses the Ruby transformation engine to merge DITA content into DreamWeaver templates. Man Page Processing: A utility and suite of processing scripts that uses Ruby processing to generate nroff/troff man pages from HTML generated by the DITA Open Toolkit (OT)."

"Translation software used by over 200,000 translation professionals: SDL Trados Studio, market-leading translation software, provides a range of sophisticated features to help you not only work more easily but also up to 20% faster* than previous versions of SDL Trados. Translation memory (TM) is at the heart of SDL Trados Studio and works by recycling previously translated content so that you can complete translations projects more quickly while maintaining high quality."

"The DITA Package is a comprehensive package that includes all the tools required for a lean DITA workflow through to a print ready book. Create DITA documents with Adobe FrameMaker10, the user-friendly XML editor. At the same time profit from the improved DITA application for Adobe FrameMaker®10 and the multilingual templates. The much requested DITA Services take care of extensive publications. The prepared files are published, in a single step, by WebWorks ePublisher as PDF, online help such as Java or EclipseHelp, REVERB or as a Wiki."

Several licensing options available. See their price list for more information.

"Swordfish III is an advanced CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tool based on XLIFF 1.2 open standard, designed for demanding professional translators. Swordfish III supports exchanging TMX (Translation Memory eXchange), the vendor-neutral open XML standard for the exchange of Translation Memory (TM) data created by Computer Aided Translation (CAT) and localization tools, originally published by LISA (Localisation Industry Standards Association)."

"TopLeaf is an XML or SGML rendering system for the production of high quality PDF and hard copy output. It allows you to create stylesheets that apply consistent formatting to your content. The same stylesheets used to create paginated output can also be used to create corresponding RTF and HTML output."

"WinANT is a Windows program, build with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 using VB.NET. It serves as an interface to the Ant build utility, for the sole purpose of processing DITA documents. WinANT allows a user to select build characteristics using normal Windows interface devices such as dropdown lists, radio buttons, tabs and browse buttons. When all the required settings are in place, the program creates the Ant build file, creates a ditaval file (if required), creates a batch file, and then executes the batch file to trigger the Ant build. When Ant has finished the processing, WinANT displays the generated output file. The settings can be saved (as a build file) and later recalled."

"The Answer to DITA Publishing: ePublisher has been working with DITA for years and is the premier publishing solution available for the DITA platform. By working with ePublisher and DITA, you'll get: out-of-the-box DITA publishing, automatic styles, customizable publishing power, reverb HTML responsive output and collaboration management."

XTM International delivers industry-leading translation technologies to help you save time and money  even in high volume, multi-language environments. Whether youre an independent translator or a large LSP, you can get started in minutes, while maintaining complete control and security. Were not a translation service provider; we leave that to you. Instead, were purely a technology partner, here to enhance your capabilities, and help you maximise efficiency and minimise costs. With XTM, youre free to do what you do best: translate.

* Designed to be integrated with XMLmind’s commercial products
** Works with the Arbortext CMS

Despite all of this, there is real strength in this particular area, especially as more small, open source projects target specific aspects of DITA documentation. DITA tools by Colin Maudry, Elliot Kimber, Jarno Elovirta and ditanauts.org in particular are worth checking out.

There is also continued strength in the DITA output/processing market, which continues to grow and will likely need a separate listing of its own in a future update.

Caveat: I consider this a work in progress, as I am sure there are people out there who have run into tools and tool categories I haven’t even thought of. If so, please let me know in the forum below!

"DITAWriter" is Keith Schengili-Roberts. I work for IXIASOFT as a DITA Specialist/Information Architect. And I like to write about DITA and the technical writing community. To get ahold of me you can email me at: keith@ditawriter.com.

21 thoughts on “DITA-related Software Tools”

I would like to hear from people who actually use Heartsome to translate DITA files. I did a short test, and my impression was that the tool treats DITA files like any other XML. It even expects the extension to be .xml, and so far I couldn’t figure out how to change this.

On the other hand, Maxprograms Swordfish is not in the list. Both tools seem to share a common history, but Swordfish has some features that are very useful for DITA. For example: It identifies all the (XML) content of a ditamap that should be translated, and it displays segments with resolved conrefs.

Fluid Topics is a new is a full-web solution for publishing online DITA documentation produced with structured content authoring tools.
More information about Fluid Topics on http://www.fluidtopics.com

I consider Madcap Flare more an authoring platform, so I am planning on adding it to my updated listing of DITA editors, as I think that would be a better fit that a list of more generalized DITA-related utilities. Cheers!

11/29/14 – Samalander no longer sells their DITA tools, and does not allow them to be downloaded. Details on their site.

By the way, MadCap Flare does a reasonable job of importing a DITA map and topics if you want to output to one of the Flare outputs like webhelp or even PDF. But editing these imported files in Flare and trying to output them in DITA is probably not advisable.